


Ash Tray

by lluviadinoche



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Drugs, M/M, Murder, Prostitution, Smoking, Toxic Relationship, gun - Freeform, the closest youll get of Mafia Romano from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 12:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18410312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lluviadinoche/pseuds/lluviadinoche
Summary: “Smoking kills, idiot”“Oh, and the gun you’re holding to my head, doesn’t?”{for the quote challenge on my Tumblr}





	Ash Tray

_**Listen to[THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE) while reading** _

_—–_

Lorenzo has been playing this game for years. It’s always the same thing with him. They chase after each other and somehow he always gets away.

Or at least that was what he told his superiors.

It was a game that they came up with.

_“Why do you always manage to get away?”_

_“Oh, don’t tell me you are actually trying your best to capture me.” that cocky grin on his face sent Lorenzo’s mind into a frenzy._

_“What if I am?”_

_“Then I would say our little game is a lot less boring.”_

But he was right.

Lorenzo really wasn’t trying his best. He hadn’t since the first time he had him pinned against a wall. He could have ended everything right there. He could have shot him and ended the stupid war that he had started.

But Alfred was beautiful.

And Lorenzo was oh so weak.

Everything about him left him filled with a breath of life. The second time that he had been face to face with him was an accident. He was sitting outside of his apartment complex, staring at the streets with a cigarette to his lips. Gunshots occasionally filled the air and he wondered what it would feel like to be caught in the crossfire and bleed out.

Metal pressed to his head and when he looked up, there was Alfred, staring at him with the most annoying grin he ever saw. He flicked his cigarette away.

Lorenzo was so so weak.

_“Smoking kills, idiot”_

_“Oh, and the gun you’re holding to my head, doesn’t?”_

_“Play a game with me and I won’t shoot.”_

He saw good in him. He saw hope in him. He didn’t see the world of crime, drugs, and prostitution he allowed himself to get pushed by. Lorenzo felt alive when he was kissing him and he felt free when he cupped Alfred’s face in the dim light. So he played the game.

He was like the swirls of smoke when he burned incense. His darkness and allure felt like the dim light of the cigarettes that he pressed to his lips on those nights they stood in front of each other. Eventually, their game became a game of running from everyone that could catch them and spending nights with their lips pressed to each other.

Lorenzo would be above him, running his fingers through his hair, flicking cigarette ash to the side.

_“Do you belong to me?”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Would you die for me?”_

No. Lorenzo was weak.

Lorenzo was selfish.

He valued his life more than anyone else’s and for that, his hands were tainted with the blood and names of husbands, wives, sons, daughters—all innocent.

And Alfred made the sting all the worse.

Yes, he was ruining them. He was killing their pimps, he was the reason their alcohol manufacturing business was crumbling, he had killed their business with some opium rings, and he was dragging Lorenzo down with him.

God knows he never wanted to be where he was. He felt so dirty and selfish. He didn’t like to think about the people that he hurt nor the way he so easily succumbed to the power of them. The thought of the blood on his hands and the women he handed over to a life of objectification and abuse made his stomach tear itself apart.

_“It’s survival.” he told Alfred._

_“At what cost?”_

_“You don’t understand. You’re one to talk anyway; you have as much blood on your hands as I do.”_

_“Not innocent blood.”_

Lorenzo was burning at his touch. Alfred was a sweet sugar kiss and the warm milk at night. There was no way to describe what he did to him. This single prostitute with a face that nobody but he knew.

It was an honor to stand there face to face with him.

Even as he burned away.

Even as that smell of incense became the rot of cigarettes. The sweet touch that could have healed any wound became ashy stains that he knew he could never wash away. It wasn’t a game anymore.

_“I’m starting to think that you don’t actually want to catch him. Have you sided with the enemy?”_

_“Never. I’ll catch him. I promise.”_

Their kisses felt like acid now and when Lorenzo cupped his face, he knew Alfred was looking into his eyes not with love but with the question of if that hope and good he once saw still lingered there. There was disappointment.

_“Come back to me…”_

Lorenzo couldn’t look at him, so he closed his eyes.

He wanted out. He wanted out. He wanted to leave. The blood was eating at his skin and the screams and faces of women he tore away from their lives and the men he threw to the wolves haunted him, driving him closer and closer to the edge.

Alfred held his face.

_“I can’t.”_

He was rotting away. Every piece of light left in him was dying out. The death was not affecting him and though he hated the blood on his hands, he couldn’t recall feeling recent blood haunt him the same.

Perhaps that was what led to now.

There was a cigarette pressed to his lips and Alfred was staring at him, a gun pressed to Lorenzo’s forehead.

“Smoking kills, idiot..”

“And the gun you’re holding to my head doesn’t?” he asked, a small smile to his lips as he took the cigarette out.

Alfred chuckled, a couple tears rolling down his cheek. He put his finger on the trigger and Lorenzo breathed in.

_“You want out?”_

_“Of course not.”_

_“Good, you already know there’s only one way”_

One way. One way that he feared for so long because he feared what they would do. But the more that he thought about it, it didn’t sound all that bad. He didn’t need to worry and he wouldn’t be pushed around. He didn’t believe in a God anymore, so he could just rest with the fact that it would all end and he would be at rest after a life so long.

But he looked up at Alfred and there were eyes that carried so much hope in the world. Perhaps there had never been any good or hope in him but Alfred let himself believe it.

Perhaps he had imagined it.

“Hold your breath and let the world freeze like this for a little.”

Lorenzo exhaled.


End file.
